The invention relates to security systems that are ready for internet and intranet access and, more particularly, to such systems that enable any HTTP client, such as a computer running an Internet Browser software package, to setup, maintain and access the information of the systems via internet and/or intranet communication on existing corporate computer networks using standard TCP/IP protocol.
Businesses, such as banks, financial institutes and law firms, must control employees"" access to the business premises, and must ensure that the individual is actually the authorized person. Other business sectors such as manufacturers, also want to keep track of the attendance records of their employees and workers. Today, businesses use a variety of security systems to achieve the purposes. These include systems using traditional passwords or security-access cards, and more advanced biometrics systems such as fingerprint and voice authentication systems. However, each of these systems poses problems.
The existing security systems can provide different security levels to satisfy different security requirements for businesses. But with the exception of the simplest systems such as single password-based stand-alone access-control devices, all these security systems are complicated to setup and maintain, especially for larger-scale security systems that involve more than one security terminal interconnected to form a completed system.
In general, the existing security systems in the market today require dedicated computers connecting to the systems for the setup and maintenance purposes (e.g., new enrollment, withdrawal and other changes of employees"" data). The security system must be connected to a dedicated computer via a serial connection (usually in RS-232 or RS-485 standard) or other similar channels using proprietary communication protocol. The dedicated computer must be a PC, running Microsoft Windows 95/98/NT for example, and must be running a special software provided by the vendor of the security systems that works with the proprietary protocol. Such proprietary software and protocol are platform-dependent, and other less-common computer platforms, such as Apple Macintosh and Unix machines, usually cannot do the job due to the lack of support from the vendor.
The setup and maintenance of the dedicated computers, the connections, and the proprietary software are cumbersome and require specialized knowledge to use effectively, and takes a lot of expensive IT times. Also, the additional costs of these dedicated computers and software are expensive.
Besides the problems associated with the setup and maintenance of the existing security systems, it is also difficult and inconvenient for users to access the information of the security systems, such as the access and attendance records of each individual. Generally, a typical security system only generates and sends raw data to the dedicated computer, in a form of simple line-by-line listing of the access log of all individuals in chronological order, in plain ASCII format. Only the dedicated computer can download and collect this raw data. Other computers cannot access the data. The raw data requires another software package to convert the raw data into useful and meaningful information for the management purpose (e.g., to get the attendance reports for an individual of a particular month), and the package is not typically integrated with the software that is used to setup and maintain the security system. Again, this additional software package can only be installed and run on the dedicated computer connected to the security system. And in order for other users in the company to access the information over the corporate computer network (e.g., when the users in the administration department prepare the payroll), the company may need to develop special software to allow other computers to access the information. This again is cumbersome and costs a lot of expensive IT times, and the information collected in this manner is not real-time data as it is not collected directly from the security system, and there is usually a time delay. Users are usually left to guess if the information is accurate and up-to-date or not.
In summary, the problems with the existing security systems today include the difficulties in setting up and maintaining the systems, the failure to utilize the existing computer network resources, the inconvenience for users to access the data and information of the systems, and the incapability for users to get the information in a real-time manner.